The use of security seals is well known. They are necessities in the shipping industry, the precious material and cash industries as well as in the utilities industry to name only a few.
In the shipping industry security seals are used to seal freight cars, truck doors, cargo containers and other cargo structures. In the precious material and cash industries they are used to seal bags for valuables, bags for currency and coins, as well as precious material containers. In the utilities industry such seals are used to seal water meters, gas meters and electric meters as well as other types of equipment. In each of these examples, the seal serves as an indicator of whether or not the seal, and thus the container in sealed devices, has been tampered with or attacked. If a seal or if it can provide an inspector with an indication that the seal has been tampered with or removed so as to put the inspector on guard as to the possibility that the container is not secure, then the seal has been successful.
In addition to a sealing function, security seals also have been utilized as carriers of information. Thus, serialized numbers have been imprinted on the seals to provide identification and correlation information. More recently, labels have been secured to the seals to provide information such as routing, identification and the like.
Two problems have been particularly vexing to those skilled in the labeled seal arts. The first is that nefarious individuals have developed the capability to remove labels from the seal structure and replace them with labels containing incorrect information. For example, where a seal is provided with a label having routing information and the seal used to seal a precious material container, it would be very desirable to a thief to be able to remove the genuine label from the seal and substitute a different label having different routing information. With such a technique the thief might be able to cause a container of precious gems or the like to be delivered to his home rather than to a jewelry store as intended. This undetectable removal of a label from a seal to permit fraudulent replacement has been a serious problem.
A second problem has been difficulty in affixing labels to seals made of certain materials. More specifically, many security seals are made of plastic material such as polypropylene and polyethylene. The usual method of affixing labels to seals is through the use of adhesives. As is well recognized by those skilled in these arts, it is often difficult to get good adhesion with the surface of polyethylene, polypropylene and other plastic surfaces. In the past, manufacturers often resorted to such techniques as corona treating and the like to prepare the plastic for receiving adhesed labels. This approach, however, was expensive and only marginally successful.
As is discussed below in detail the present invention solves the above-described problems and provides an inexpensive, reliable seal with label.